PH345: Winter 2025
Which color appears most often?
Which color appears most often?
Aesthetics or encodings are ways that we map data to visual properties of the plot and include position, color, length, shape, area, volume
Choice of aesthetics helps or hinders your audience’s understanding of what the data are showing
One proportion for each of five groups (A-E)
For each of 9 plots, guess group B’s numerical proportion and rank. Enter your guesses on this google form:
| Plot | True value B | True rank B |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.160 | 3 |
| 2 | 0.205 | 3 |
| 3 | 0.333 | 5 |
| 4 | 0.365 | 5 |
| 5 | 0.254 | 4 |
| 6 | 0.161 | 2 |
| 7 | 0.283 | 4 |
| 8 | 0.034 | 1 |
| 9 | 0.098 | 2 |
Take away: some aesthetics communicate data better than others
Figure 14 from Mackinlay (1986)
What is the rate of change of atmospheric CO2 over time?
Figure 6 from Cleveland and McGill (1985)
What is the relative size of big vs small circle?
14x
How does distance between lines vary?
it’s constant
Figure 1c from Wong (2010a)
Different visual variables encoding the same five values.
Figure 1c from Wong (2010a)
Figure 15 from Mackinlay (1986)
Lines in graphs create clear connection. Enclosure is an effective way to draw attention to a group of objects.
Figure 2b from Wong (2010b)
Cleveland, W.S. and McGill, R., 1985. Graphical perception and graphical methods for analyzing scientific data. Science, 229(4716), pp.828-833.
Mackinlay, J., 1986. Automating the design of graphical presentations of relational information. Acm Transactions On Graphics (Tog), 5(2), pp.110-141.
Wehrli, U., 2003. Tidying Up Art. Prestel Publishing.
Wong, B., 2010a. Design of data figures. Nature Methods, 7(9), pp.665-666.
Wong, B., 2010b. Points of view: Gestalt principles (Part 1). Nature Methods, 7(11), p.863.